Dumars still basking in glow of latest NBA title

JACKSONVILLE -- It's a casual Wednesday afternoon and Joe Dumars is planted against the hard plastic chair making small talk.

It's an off-day for the former Detroit Pistons all-star guard and certainly a time when Dumars' mind -- and body -- should be elsewhere.

The Pistons general manager should be away from the basketball court, states away from a meaningless practice for the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team. Summer, what little of it that Dumars has left, would be best spent enjoying the first title of his newest title.

But there's no such down time for Dumars, who capped his fourth season as Detroit's general manager with a 4-1 spanking of the heavily-favored Los Angeles Lakers last month.

At Wednesday's practice, just the third time that the team has been together, Dumars watched leisurely from the upper level.

When photographers block his view of the court, Dumars coolly ascends up the stands, rarely taking his focus off the floor. He pledges to chat up the media following the practice and makes good on it moments after. Dumars won two NBA championships as a player with the Pistons, with whom he spent his entire. On a team branded the "Bad Boys," Dumars was the oddest fit. In a band of roughnecks, thugs and a drag queen who dabbled as a basketball player, Dumars was a Boy Scout by comparison.

While he didn't adhere to the Pistons' testosterone-themed moniker, Dumars didn't have to. Quietly, he dissected defenses, held Michael Jordan in the palm of his hand and tempered the Motor City with a dash of good.

Dumars crafted the Detroit Pistons the same way that he played. Quietly, yet aggressively. Dumar's blueprint teetered on the lines of the NBA's lottery tank. He went for blue-collar players over the budget busters and shipped out a perennial all-star for a pair of question marks. Then he pink slips one of the franchise's best coaches and hands the reins to Phil Mickelson of the NBA.

But those weren't moves made without purpose. Dumars says the assembly of one of the most unlikely NBA champions was akin to a puzzle. He knew the pieces would fit -- even if those moves baffled fans and stirred up the talking heads.

"Team concept and team play, we've been teaching that the last three or four years in Detroit," Dumars said. "The pieces were in place, we just had the change the script a little bit ..."

And so, Dumars sat in the shadowy loft at the University of North Florida arena on Wednesday, enjoying his time away from basketball.